President Bush, hailing moves toward democracy throughout Eastern Europe, said Monday that "the world, increasingly, is on the side of God." Bush, in a speech to the annual convention of the National Religious Broadcasters, also said: "I believe with all my heart that one cannot be America's President without a belief in God, without the strength that your faith gives to you."

Surgeon General C. Everett Koop assailed conservative critics and appealed to religious broadcasters Monday to help spread the word about the danger of AIDS. Koop said that he has "no misgivings about anything" contained in an AIDS report he issued last October, but that he probably would be "just a little bit clearer" in the section on sex education in schools if he had it to do again.

An Orange County company that wants to buy the bankrupt PTL says it would not make major changes in the religious conglomerate if it wins the bidding for the ministry's estimated $161 million in assets, according to a proposal filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Columbia, S.C. Under the reorganization plan it submitted last week, Family Entertainment America Inc.

Fifteen Black Hebrews were arrested today after disrupting a prayer breakfast in honor of Israel, overturning a table and climbing onto the stage with protest signs. More than 700 people had assembled for the breakfast about 7:15 a.m. when the demonstrators, who had spread throughout the large room, began handing out leaflets protesting Israeli government policies. Atty. Gen.

A group of evangelical Christian leaders are endorsing a National Day of Prayer Jan. 12 for the Persian Gulf crisis. Some participants, including those in foreign countries, are planning to link up via phone and videotape with a Southern California prayer convocation to participate in one hour of prayer beginning at 11 a.m. Redeem America, a group based in Orange County, which says it is dedicated to bringing America "back to her constitutional Judeo-Christian biblical moorings" is the sponsor.

The Internal Revenue Service said Tuesday that it lacks authority to police the tax-exempt status of churches, and the Rev. Jerry Falwell said the PTL sex scandal has aroused such public concern that television ministers will have to police themselves. "The arrogance we have all been guilty of in the past is over," Falwell told a congressional hearing called in the aftermath of the sex-and-payoff scandal in the PTL ministry.

The plaintiff in a bitter, long-running suit against Tustin-based Trinity Broadcasting Network dropped the civil action in a New York court on Wednesday. Keith A. Houser, who had charged in court documents that the Christian television station he founded in Fishkill, N.Y.

The yearlong sniping between Paul Crouch, founder of Tustin-based Trinity Broadcasting Network, and the National Religious Broadcasters over ethics and financial accountability continued this week at the NRB's convention in Washington. In December, Crouch resigned from the voluntary organization of 1,100 Protestant evangelicals involved in radio and television, citing "lying, trumped-up charges (that) were aimed at the heart" of his 24-hour-a-day Christian programming service.

National Religious Broadcasters is ready to expel 162 members for failing to meet standards of financial accountability, according to the organization's president. Most of the member groups on the list are relatively small radio and television ministries that have failed to provide financial statements detailing income and spending, NRB President David Clark said Wednesday at the conclusion of a four-day convention of nearly 3,700 religious broadcasters here.

In the mid-1970s a vision came to Paul Crouch, but it wasn't what a man of the cloth might have expected. A map of North America had appeared on his ceiling, glowing with pencil-thin beams of light that shot in every direction. "Lord," asked Crouch, a Pentecostal minister, "what does this mean?" God, according to Crouch, had just one word for him: "Satellite. " Crouch, who belonged to the Assemblies of God, had been trying to spread the Gospel through a small television station in Tustin, but the vision changed his business plan.